Barnes & Noble announced today on their website the update for eReader NOOKcolor that will improve Wi-Fi connectivity and Home and Shop performance. The update introduces new features such as the ability to pinch and zoom in browser and adding a text banner to easily identify NOOK kids Read To Me books.

It is obvious that at the moment technology not only interferes in our lives, but even replaces classic customs, such as writing something down on a sticky note or reading a newspaper or book on our way to work. Gadgets become more and more important for our daily activities as shown by various reports on this matter. Amazon’s Kindle books for example have outsold paperback books (MSNBC), the company claiming sales of $10 billion in the last quarter of 2010. In practical terms that means that Amazon sold 143 Kindle books for every 100 paperback books. The revenues are as expected considering that the US Kindle store has more than 810,000 books of which 670,000 at the price of $9.99 or less.

Amazon left no stone unturned to keep its promise of Kindle beating the Harry Potter series in sales and it did succeed. Some of the steps include the introduction of a Windows Phone 7 app and the Android Kindle app’s pre-installation on supporting Verizon devices.

In the eReader market that becomes more and more busy, Barnes & Noble spread their eReader device in over 2,500 Walmart stores and stepped up with more than 1 million titles, most of them at the price of $9.99 and half a million free titles.

As previously covered a few weeks ago, the tight game features Amazon’s Kindle currently holding a 47% share of the market, Apple’s iPad 32% and leftovers such as Sony Reader and Barnes and Noble NOOK with 4% and respectively 5%.